I learned that being a teacher and being a professional are different depending on how you view what a professional should be.

I learned what it means to be a professional versus what a professional may look like. Additionally I learned about how societal views and expectations of teachers are not the same standard of what other professionals are expected to be. AKA stereotypes.

I learned about the code of ethics and how probationary contracts work.

I noticed that teachers get very little respect compared to other professionals.

I noticed that I should be cautious of my rights how they protect me and how I can adapt my teaching style to make sure I don’t get in trouble.

How did we get to this point and why is there so many politics surrounding teaching?

I learned about how the chain of command works in regards to authority in the school, and who to go to about what situation. As a first year teacher this information is valuable to me because I should feel confident knowing there are people who have my back.

I learned about the two year probation works as a new teacher and what is to be expected of you as well as your peers. Aka STC

Continuing off of that, I also learned about my rights as a teacher and what is considered grounds for dismissal and how the “firing” process works.

I noticed that as a beginning teacher there are a lot of rules, laws, codes practices and regulations to get yourself familiar with.

I noticed how the different school boards and divisions can be quite drastic so it is important to me to learn what is expected of each division. Also how catholic and christian school divisions work.

How can I ask a new teacher avoid teacher burnout with all of these rules?

How has your upbringing/schooling shaped how you you “read the world?” What biases and lenses do you bring to the classroom? How might we unlearn / work against these biases?

Which “single stories” were present in your own schooling? Whose truth mattered?

1.I think a bias that I bring to the classroom is that everyone is different, and that can be interpreted in a good or bad way I suppose. What I mean by that is simply I know that everyone is good at something. “smart” if you will. And there are just students that aren’t “school smart” and they are not stupid by any means but I always had this idea that those are the kids that are good at other things because they are not school smart, and because of this you have to ‘modify’ your classroom so that they feel smart. But sometimes there are kids that dont want to be in school or care about doing well. The bias that I am trying to unlearn is the idea of smart students. Yes there are students who will perform better than others but I can’t give preferential treatment to the good ones because the ones that are struggling will fall behind.

2. I think a single story that I will likely always carry with me is the idea that some are less fortunate than ourselves and we need to help them. In elementary school we learned about the idea of operation Christmas child. It was a charity organization that collected shoe boxes of things such as hygiene supplies, school supplies, and toys for needy children over the world. I will admit that I a white male living in a first world country as very few woes about his living situation other than the cold, so I knew that I must have had a pretty good life If I was just giving these things away that I thought were necessities. I didn’t even know who this stuff was going to, or if they would need or want all these ‘western’ goodies. But because my school told me to do it, I did it.

What examples of citizenship education do you remember from your K-12 schooling? What types of citizenship (e.g. which of the three types mentioned in the article) were the focus? Explore what this approach to the curriculum made (im)possible in regards to citizenship.

Some of the things t hat I remember from my schooling were things like the Terry Fox walk/run. I felt like it was a participatory citizen act because it was something that was usually mandated by the school on a certain date at a certain time every year and as a student I understood the importance of it but I was a passive audience to this.

Other things that I did in k-12 that I remember was doing food bank drives for pizza parties, meaning that there was a friendly competition between some of the classes to who could donate the most food to the food bank would win a pizza party. This would of been a personal responsibility citizen because it normalized charity work and donating to people who had more needs than us, plus the incentives are also nice.

I learned that while schools will always try to stay updated and teacher to stay informed, students and parents can and will find ways to bend the rules, make exceptions or generally cause a stink about something that they think their child or school should not be doing.

I learned that biases even exist in teachers as teachers are more likely to discipline non-white students more harshly than their white counter parts.

I learned that multicultural lessons need to be incorporated frequently and often into the classroom to avoid exoticizing or othering them.

I noticed that while the curriculum is written by and for teachers, a lot of what is decided on and who approves of it is more often than not; the teachers, the students, and politicians.

I noticed that while socioeconomic factors go into what we notice and learn from trends and studies is not always the case. We as teachers need to meet students where they are at.

How can I as a white person be expected to treat my students fairly and without prejudice even when I know all these biases exist and I am still contributing to them?

Mathematics is a tricky subject to talk about. It is said that you are either a math person or you aren’t. Yet math is something can be taught and understood, because we are by our very nature; mathematical beings and yes this is directed at the student who says ” I’m NEVER gonna use this in real life”. Yes. Yes you are, so SHUSH.

We count and add, and play games, we locate, and measure and other things that are all math related. Are you serious? We do use it every day. So that doesn’t explain why I was getting low 60’s throughout high school. I think what it comes down to is that we do value math a lot in our society, but we don’t have as many ways of teaching it as we’d like. Students that learn through different intelligence may not be able to grasp complicated ideas like imaginary numbers and the infinite amount of numbers that exist in pi. This is wherein the problem lay. If we are expected to learn a certain way; not everyone will learn.

2. The Inuit community challenges the eurocentric math system by imploring verbal counting, as stated in the text: “numbers, as other numbers are built from these two numbers. The Inuit
have a base-20 numeral system. Furthermore, words chosen to designate
numbers may have an impact on Inuit students’ conception of certain
numbers.”

Another way they challenge traditional math is with measurement, no numbers are used but they can make a perfectly fitting Parka with this method: ” length—for example, the palm when making atigi (parkas).
Measuring the base of your neck will help make a perfectly fitting parka.”

Another way that I really like is their calendar, which is a lot more practical in my opinion that our western calendar, simply because it serves a purpose rather than just turning over a page and choosing to celebrate a certain day.

The name of each month comes from animal activity or from nature:
t
• coldest of all months
• when baby seals are born but are dead
• when baby seals are born
• when bearded baby seals are born
• when baby caribou are born

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CJSMTE/RCESMT 7:1 January 2007
• when birds lay their eggs
• when the ice breaks
• when sea elephants rest on land
• when the caribou’s antlers lose their velvet
• when male caribou fight for a female
• when the caribou’s antlers fall
• when two stars appear in the sky

3) I learned that social ideologies such as feminism and buddhism have practical applications in social sphere of the current political landscape and are disguised as philosophy.

I learned that it is important to learn what you believe and learn from each other ideology to understand and comprehend in our current post modern life.

I learned that people such as Dewey are always making new discoveries and forming new idealogies and learning what the best way to get results in the classroom are.

2) I noticed that educational philosophy is rather young as far as other schools of thought are concerned.

I think it is interesting that we seem to be in the golden age of educational philosophy in the way that we have made such breakthroughs to education and we are always learning and adapting what we know and are always student focused.

1) while this is valuable information, I wonder which philosophy is best and what should be my goals for my students? With curriculum always changing, what is the best method? How are teachers expected to keep up?

What is the purpose of teaching Treaty Ed (specifically) or First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI) Content and Perspectives (generally) where there are few or no First Nations, Metis, Inuit peoples?

I think that the reason we teach some of these things is that it is important to remember where we came from, and who was here before it. First Nations peoples were here before us and it is our duty to honor and remember them. The more practical answer is to be informed, so when we are in a situation where our knowledge can be passed on to people who may not know what may or may not be offensive to these kind of marginalized groups and we can act as a sort of emissary on their behalf, keeping in mind that we do not speak for them.

What does it mean for your understanding of curriculum that “We are all treaty people”?

As I stated before, the first nations came before us and this was their land. I benefit from something called institutionalized racism, meaning that I benefit in ways that others do not because of my privileged, so acknowledging that we are treaty people is more valuable than saying “we are all equal, or “I don’t see colour”

Spend at least one paragraph making some connections to TreatyEdCamp – What did you hear/see there that might help you to enact treaty education in your future classroom?

I think I took a lot away from thinking about how we use language in our classroom. We can build up or tear down our students, and we have no way of knowing what kind of past they have or what kind of trauma they are facing and how we should as current and future educators to create a “safer” place in our classroom, and learn to meet students where they are at. I feel that I will because of my treaty Ed experience en devour to make my classrooms feel like my students can feel like they should be excited to learn.

I learned that even positive stereotypes can have a negative impact. It is important to recognize canadianism and what that looks like; but do not exclude cultural differences.

I also learned that socio economic factors can impact a students learning. For example: if a student has low expectations, teachers and in some cases students will avoid calling on them or grouping them. This creates a divide between self esteem and academic achievement.

I learned that summer setbacks (sometimes I’ve heard it called the summer slump) can have a big impact on what a student retains when they come back to school in the fall. If low income families have no books and do not read; it is shown to affect their overall reading level.

I noticed that achievement gaps exist across all kinds of ethic groups. And the less “white” someone is, the more margin for failure there is. As noted in the text only 60% of African american students graduate versus an 80 % for white students.

I noticed that combatting stereotypes and “rewiring” and relearning positive behaviors and getting rid of prejudices is something we must work towards. Ignoring the problem only makes you complicit to the problem;instead work to be a better person.

One question I have is how I can I make an effort to make sure each student that comes into my classroom feel like they are being heard and represented so things like “white girl clubs” are not present at my school.

Part of growing up is about learning, but what is shocking to learn is that some things that we learn can be harmful. It’s true! We are not inherently racist, homophobic, xenophobic, but we passively learn these things and therefore we must “unlearn” what is harmful. The narrative of the paper “Learning from place” speaks about how it is just as important to ignore and reject colonialist narratives but also to nuture and protect the way of live that colonialism destroyed; such as the the Mushkegowuk
‘way of life,’ as mentioned in the text.

When it comes to adapting this to my life, I am reminded that I must be conscious of what messages I am passing along to my peers and my future students. As the text says:”

(2001), says decolonization as an act of
resistance must not be limited to rejecting and transforming dominant ideas; it also
depends on recovering and renewing traditional, non-com-modified cultural patterns such as mentoring and inter-generational relationships.” This quote examines how it is our job as treaty people to nurture and protect these traditional ways of life while also being conscious of the colonial narrative.